Coffee Tales, Chapter 6: Langston

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Coffee Tales, Chapter 6: “Langston”

By Myron J. Clifton

Langston likes a Grande Zebra Mocha at 200 degrees. This drink is alternately known as “The Michael Jackson” and “The Tuxedo”

I tried Langston’s drink recently, here is my review.

This drink is smooth and lush. It requires you to pause to carefully consider your next move in life. It is a drink that centers itself in its environment calling attention to itself even while it causes you to pause.

This is a drink that pulls you in and causes you to look inward; it slows you down because, let’s be honest, 200 degrees will do that. Then, shortly after consumption one is reminded of the basics of life, the A, B, C’s of life one could say. Of simple pleasures, pure weather, fruit trees, and street football on asphalt that isn’t tougher than the kids running and falling on it.

Like Langston.

There is a certain natural duality with this Tuxedo, and Michael Jackson drink, of course. The melding of chocolate and white chocolate in a dance of almost equals – almost because true chocolate is the treat of the Goddess; and white chocolate is a capable companion roller skating in unison, with a grove that is happy, joyous and certainly designed to show-off all those carefully honed skills. Like Langston.

The third act of this marvelous drink is the smoothness that comes once the white and black are fully joined and are now together with the now reduced heat. The heat was necessary to fully join the two; the trial by fire, as it were. However, there is something unique about this third act, this heat. The heat never really goes away. Oh, the drink cools for sure, as all things do in the Universe in an attempt to reach absolute zero, which is unreachable. But the heat is still there, just underneath one’s perception.

It turns out that not every drink, nor every person “comes out of the fire.” No, some stay in the fire and control the fire and even subdues the fire. Some remain in the fire, it would seem, to help others who enter the fire and who may not be able to make it out of the fire; to survive their personal trial. Those who remain seem to be there to help point other travelers in the right direction; to give them relief from the heat; and to prove that the fire and heat can and is being withstood and even…celebrated.

They are the guideposts and rest places embedded within the toughest times in our lives. When in the fire of our personal trials, we can open our eyes and see a friend there to welcome us and help us continue our path. Like Langston.

I will enjoy this drink again (and again) because the duality, the smoothness and, above all, the fire this drink provides and shares is like drinking fire from a Dragon. And of holding and containing a stick of dynamite. And like spending a day with Langston.

This then is Langston Kevin Kennedy’s (defensive end, Oakland Dynamites, expert roller skater, lefty in all sports, defender of friends, and long time 3-card monty shark) drink.